Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is a 2001 American computer-animated comedy film. The film was based on a few 5-minute animated shorts shown on Nickelodeon in 2001, The television series was supposed to begin before the release of the movie, but since there was not enough time, the animated shorts were created. It was produced by Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies with O Entertainment. It was nominated for the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature (lost to Shrek). The film was produced using off-the-shelf software (LightWave 6) by DNA Productions of Dallas, Texas. A spin-off TV series The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, premiered July 20, 2002 only on Nickelodeon. This marked the first Nicktoon to be spin-off from a movie. The film was released on December 21st 2001. It was released 4 months after Jurassic Park 3 was released and 1 month after the first episode of Walking with Beasts was aired. Plot The movie begins at an Air Force base somewhere in Colorado. The Air Force radar detects up a UFO, and they send planes up to examine the situation. The pilots are surprised to find that it is a rocket carrying two boys and a robotic dog: Jimmy Neutron (Debi Derryberry), Carl Wheezer (Rob Paulsen), and Goddard (Frank Welker). Jimmy needs to launch a communications satellite (which is really a toaster) to communicate with an alien species who sent him a message that was garbled in the ionosphere. Unfortunately, the pulse rockets fail, and the rocket cannot leave the atmosphere. Jimmy tapes some soda to the toaster and throws it, propelling the soda into space. Then, the rocket falls down to town and lands on his roof. He is reprimanded by his parents (Megan Cavanagh and Mark DeCarlo.) He then gets ready for school, but his antics caused him to miss the bus. He tests his latest invention, a form of bubble transportation, made from a special bubble gum. He catches up with the school bus, but the bubble pops when it hits a tree. In the classroom, Cindy Vortex, (Carolyn Lawrence) Jimmy's rival and love interest, is giving a report on dinosaurs. When Cindy says that girl dinosaurs are better than boy dinosaurs, Jimmy proceeds to correct her with technical data. During show and tell, Jimmy shows Ms. Fowl (Andrea Martin) and the class a shrink ray. He attempts to shrink Cindy's head, but the ray malfunctions and does not work, however upon leaving class, the shrink ray suddenly shrinks Ms. Fowl, causing her to get tiny and end up battling a worm that has gotten out of an Apple. When walking home, Jimmy, Carl, and their friend Sheen Estevez (Jeff Garcia) spot a poster for an amusement park. Sheen gets excited about meeting Ultra Lord. Carl gets excited to touch a llama. However, their parents refuse to let them go due to a school night, and Jimmy is grounded, so they sneak out without their parents knowing. They have lots of fun. Jimmy, Carl, and Sheen both go on many rides. Carl, and Jimmy go on a tramway while Sheen goes to meet Ultra Lord, which is really a guy in a costume. Carl touches a Llama, and gets a button that says "I touched a llama" They then go on a roller coaster ride that the cars look like bats. By now, the shrink ray is working again, so Nick Dean also had the Golden Rule. Meanwhile, the toaster is found by an egg-like alien race called the Yolkians. They seem to be of green substance (or yolk, possibly) which contains no water, and they see with eye stalks. They use pods with hovering capability and robotic arms to move, but they fly spaceships in space (that look like chickens). King Goobot (Patrick Stewart) and his assistant, Ooblar (Martin Short), watch the message, Then, all the ships in the armada head to Earth. They take all adults in the city (Excluding Ms.Fowl due to her shrinkage) and leave, putting obviously fake notes on the refrigerators to tell the kids where they've gone but there's something in their kitchen. On the way home, Carl spots a shooting star, so he, Jimmy, and Sheen wish for no more parents so they could have fun all the time and be free. The next morning, Jimmy spots the Note set and reads it. The notes are the same for everyone, so Jimmy has Goddard scan for adult life forms. When the report comes back (none within radar range), the kids start celebrating and doing things they couldn't do normally. The next morning, the craze has worn off, and at home, Jimmy is upset that his parents didn't say goodbye. Jimmy goes to his lab and compares the note the Yolkians left with notes his parents wrote. When the writing doesn't compare, Jimmy realizes that the notes are fake. Goddard finds evidence of aliens on the computer, and Jimmy tracks them to another system. He organizes the other kids in town to build rockets from the theme park rides to travel there. While staying on an asteroid, everyone recalls what their parents did at bedtime before they were abducted by aliens. The next day, Goddard assaults Goobot. Jimmy calls Goddard on Libby's cell phone and tricks Ooblar into thinking Goddard will self-destruct in an explosion covering 30 square miles. Goddard frees the kids using a glitch in his obedience program (when told to play dead, he detonates in a small explosion, which blows down the door), and they make it to the arena were the parents will be sacrificed to Poultra. When they reach it, an unusual ceremony is finishing (with mind-control devices, the parents do the chicken dance!), and Poultra, a gigantic three-eyed chicken with reptilian legs, hatching from her egg. Jimmy quickly comes up with a plan: Sheen heads to an airfield to obtain a transport, he gets the mind controller, and the rest of the kids keep the guards busy. They escape, but Goobot follows them in his ship at the head of the Yolkus fleet. He orders the ships to open fire. During the battle, Jimmy skims the surface of Yolkus' sun, and flares destroy all but Goobot's ship. The king sends a taunting message to Jimmy, who flies out with Goddard. He uses his shrink ray to make himself the size of a planet, and blows the ship into an oncoming asteroid. Goobot vows he'll be back. The kids are reunited with their parents, and they make it home without further incident. After which they had eggs for breakfast and Judy and Hugh Neutron take a few sips of Jimmy's experimental soda and begin to burp uncontrollably. Realizing a picture of an atom (Jimmy's signature logo that could only be found on the front of his shirt), Judy yells "JAMES ISAAC NEUTRO--" before burping loudly. The family (and Carl) laugh. Outside Goddard imitates a bird. Trivia *In an early sequence, Jimmy rides his jetpack past a train labeled MJ12, coinciding with the extraterrestrial theme. *This is the only time the Earwax Museum '''is seen during Jimmy's brain blasts, unless you count the '''Attack Of The Twonkies video game. *This is the first time Jimmy cries. The second time will be in Brobot. *This is also the only Jimmy Neutron production to have two brain blasts, instead of one. *The film is notably more emotional and serious than the TV series. *A gentle dark ride "Planet of the Cats" is a obvious reference to Franklin J. Schaffner's 1968 film Planet of the Apes. *When Jimmy crash lands on his house in the beginning of the movie, three birds flying in a V-shaped pattern can be seen in the sky, several times. This may coincide with the extraterrestrial photographs taken by Billy Meier that featured three UFO's flying over a valley. This can also be observed in several of the TV episodes. *In the beginning of the message Jimmy sends to the aliens, he salutes them using the Vulcan salute, "Live Long And Prosper" *When Sheen takes the Ultra Lord oath in the amusement park, his right hand is doing the Vulcan salute. *The Egyptian-style ride "Show Me The Mummy" is a parody of Jerry Maguire's catch-phrase "Show me the money". *One of the rides in Retroland, Eye in the Sky, has a scared kid's face with eyes wide open and his hands on his cheeks. That's the famous pose of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone (Which itself is a parody of the Edward Munch painting The Scream). It is also the pose of Luigi in Luigi's Mansion, released around the time of this film. *The alien's Y.T. program is a parody of E.T. *There is a CGI error, when Jimmy and Cindy are arguing about dinosaurs in the classroom, In the background, Carl appears to be phasing through his table desk. *During the scene when the kids are camping on the asteroid, Nick's story is from the 1999 film, The Blair Witch Project. *Look closely when Hugh Neutron is "channel surfing" on his TV set, the movie open for Niceklodeon Movies called "Rhino", is seen, alongside one indent and TV Land's logo. *One ride in Retroland that is made into a spacecraft is called "Bat Outta Heck", an obvious reference to Meat Loaf's song and album, Bat out of Hell. *In the scene where all of the kids are in space and camping on an asteroid, they are able to survive despite having no protection against the freezing cold, lack of air pressure or oxygen. Their space ships aren't even sealed and most expose the children's bodies. Curiously, in the series that spawned from the movie, in the episode "The Junkman Cometh", while on a trip to the moon, Sheen asks Jimmy about this, and Jimmy answers him, but his explanation goes unheard, as Carl's loud and terrible singing drowns it out. *When the Yolkian planet is viewed from space, it seems to be based on Coruscant. *The Yolkian Ooblar's name is perhaps a nod to The War of The Worlds where the Martian’s battle cry is 'Ulla' - pronounced Oolaa. *When Hugh Neutron is reading the newspaper, a picture of Jimmy and Carl on Jimmy's rocket is shown as a UFO, even though Jimmy is still currently flying. *Jimmy keeps the rocket he flies in the movie. *Although Goddard's radar does not sense any adults, Ms. Fowl is still in the school. This may have been a malfunction. *Ms. Fowl is not seen unshrink in the movie. *In the movie, Cindy drinks Purple Flurp while doing Tai Chi, but in the book version, she eats a Purple Flurp Bar while doing Tai Chi. *In the book, Goddard doesn't ask Jimmy to build him a female poodle in his options. *Also, this is the only time Goddard's voice reads the options to Jimmy as opposed to the words that appear on the screen with clicking sounds. *Jimmy and the other children battling the Yolkian guards is a reference to Agent J battling the giant alien cockroach to prevent him from going near the second spaceship at an abandoned World's Fair from the 1997 film, Men in Black. *During the opening scene, a Military Commander sends out planes to investigate what thing it is and the planes are scene flying they somehow resemble F-14 Tomcats, this is a reference to "Top Gun". *This movie is also based off of the 1998 pilot episode "Runaway Rocketboy", but with similar differences. Deleted scenes * In the theatrical trailer, there is a brief shot where Cindy is shown telling Jimmy, "If we blow up, whatever's left of me is kicking your butt." Television commercials for the movie had the line changed to "kicking your can." In the print novelization, Cindy says this line right before the kids blast off into space. * The trailer and novelization also include two other lines of dialogue from Cindy that were ultimately unused in the film. The first of these is her response to Jimmy introducing his Shrink Ray, which was originally "Will it work on your big head?" (in the finished film, she says "What's the matter, Neutron? Aren't you short enough already?") The other line is "For a nerd, he sure comes in handy." The trailer suggests that she was to say this right before she and Jimmy smile at each other while flying through space. The novelization, however, has her saying it to Jimmy after he saves her from being attacked by one of the Yokian guards. * The novelization also includes a few other scenes that were cut or changed in the movie itself: ** A prologue scene is added, showing the Yokians arriving in the solar system and setting a course for Earth. ** The scene with Cindy and Libby in Cindy's room (right after Jimmy sneaks out of his house) is slightly longer. Libby asks Cindy if she ever thinks about getting married. Cindy balks at this, because she thinks boys are disgusting, but Libby teases her about her crush on Nick. ** Another scene with the Yokians arriving on Earth while Jimmy, Carl, and Sheen are at Retroland is included. The Yokians on the ship receive a video call from King Goobot, and when one of the crew members fails to salute, he is promptly ejected into space. Goobot proclaims to commence kidnapping the humans, reminding Captain Spoor (see below) to only grab the large specimens because "size does matter." ** After the sequence with the kids celebrating not having their parents around, there is a scene where the Yokian ships return to Yolkus with the enslaved parents. King Goobot tries out the remote control for the Hats of Obedience, using Hugh Neutron as his test subject. But then Hugh's Hat malfunctions and he briefly reverts back to normal, much to Goobot's annoyance. When Captain Spoor's first officer points out that it was a result of the device being manipulated too aggressively, Goobot obliterates the unfortunate Yokian with his Doomstick (a device not seen in the movie). ** After the kids blast off into space, there is an extra scene with King Goobot and Ooblar at the Yokian marination plant, discussing their plans to feed the adults to Poultra. They then start poking each of the adults, making them yell out in pain. ** After Jimmy shuts off the hypnosis on the adults and they begin to escape, King Goobot uses his Doomstick on Ooblar. ** During the kids' battle with Poultra, there's a brief scene where Sheen sneaks around the spaceport hangar and hijacks the large space freighter that the humans lateruse to escape Yolkus. ** The novelization includes a Yokian character called Captain Spoor, who is in charge of their expedition to the solar system and, in the novelization, is the one who receives Jimmy's message. A brief clip and audio of Spoor watching Jimmy's message can be seen in the theatrical trailer. In the finished film, that scene is changed so that King Goobot directly sees the message himself. Cancelled Sequel A sequel to this film was planned, entitled, Jimmy Neutron: The Search for Carl, but was shifted due to the production of Rugrats Go Wild from Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies. However, the GBA version of Jimmy Neutron VS Jimmy Negatron had you find Carl in the "Jelly World", which is the Yolkian planet. Category:TV Movies Category:Movies